Don’t Be a Turkey!

The North American tradition of the Thanksgiving holiday is typically centered around family, food and - for those in much of the lower section of the continent - the American version of football.

That’s a fairly well-known fact.

What might not be so well known about the holiday? Welp, how about….

1. The very first Thanksgiving spanned three days - sure, one decadent day itself can seem quite long, depending on the company and food intake, but apparently that first corn harvest in November 1621 proved so bountiful, the original Pilgrims and Native American allies went all out and extended the initial festival.
2. The author of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” also responsible for Thanksgiving holiday recognition - yes, Sarah Josepha Hale, who authored the revered nursery rhyme in 1827, spent decades lobbying for a national holiday declaration. President Abraham Lincoln made the declaration official a week after her last letter to him in 1863, earning her the nickname, the Godmother of Thanksgiving.
3. The TV dinner arose out of a Thanksgiving mix-up - yep, in 1954, an ordering mistake by an employee of the frozen food company, Swanson & Sons - to the tune of 260 tons of Thanksgiving turkeys - was spun into sales and marketing gold when a salesman came up with the idea of filling 5,000 aluminum trays with the meat plus all the holiday fixings, inspired by pre-prepared airline food.
4. The first Thanksgiving feast may not have included turkey - the food on the table shared by colonists and Native Americans apparently did not include turkey. Those original guests in 1621 enjoyed lobster, seal, swan and deer, but not the bird which has become symbolic with the holiday celebration.

Whether or not the bird was on the menu of that original feast, the turkey is firmly intertwined with Thanksgiving. That’s great for just about everyone, but the turkey itself. This holiday is a real bummer for that bird.

Your typical single-minded turkey is doing its best to get by, thinking everything is great and minding its own business, when suddenly it gets swept up in something beyond its control or capabilities. And it just goes downhill from there.

Don’t Be A Turkey

Enterprises incapable of seeing what is happening around them amid an economic landscape dominated by organizations well into their technology-fueled digital transformation are just asking to become the turkey on Thanksgiving.

Any company at this point turning a blind eye to automation and other modernization levers moving the digital economy forward is asking for trouble

Today’s corporations would be wise to embrace transformation because it is not a choice. Either you change or you won’t survive. If a company hopes to accelerate, it must shift to the digital economy.

Payments Power

ACI Worldwide, the company behind one of the world’s largest electronic payments engines, processes a whopping $14 trillion in daily payments and securities, and 250 million monthly transactions. 

In doing so, the company must respond to increasingly complex billing scenarios, frequently modified contracts and the processing of high volumes of usage data. In other words, the new-world challenges landing on the doorstep of most every global enterprise today.

By implementing RecVue’s order-to-cash platform, ACI was able to combine 5 separate billing systems across 4 acquired businesses. Consolidating 80+ distinct usage platforms, the company sends one feed into RecVue for a streamlined billing engine. In the process, ACI saw a 73% reduction in manual processing by automating complex usage-based calculations and reduced reliance on spreadsheets for usage collection and billing verification.

No turkeys to be found anywhere around there.

On the occasion of this week’s holiday, our wishes are for an enjoyable, turkey-fueled Thanksgiving at home and a decidedly turkey-free working environment.

Contact us today to learn how best to put the power of RecVue’s advanced billing, revenue and partner compensation platform to work for you and deftly avoid turkey-dom.